Military spending in crosshairs

Bolstered by warnings from top military officers about potentially dire national security consequences, some members of Congress are pushing back against the prospect that deep defense spending cuts will be part of a plan to reduce the nation’s burgeoning deficit.

Leadership-backed plans in the Senate and House would impose 10-year caps on discretionary spending, saving $1.2 trillion. Most of that would come from the Pentagon, since it accounts for slightly more than half of discretionary spending and is projected to take a greater share in the future.

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With Democrats opposing entitlement cuts and Republicans unwilling to raise taxes, defense is the one area where many in both parties can agree to cut, buoyed by polls showing Americans want it to be on the table and the popular idea that the huge deficit itself is a national security issue.

But some lawmakers argue that cutting military spending in wartime is a bad idea, and discount the idea of reaping a “peace dividend” from the end of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. And they got some help this week from top military officers, who suggested the cuts might require a strategic pullback by the United States.

President Barack Obama’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, told the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing Tuesday that existing proposals to save up to $1 trillion from Pentagon spending over 10 years “would be extraordinarily difficult and very high risk.”

His remarks echoed those a week ago by Obama’s nominee for vice chairman, Adm. James Winnefeld, who told the same panel: “As we get to a higher and higher number, we’re going to find that the strategies we currently have are going to reach inflection points where we’re just going to have to stop doing some of the things we currently are able to do because what we can’t afford is to have any kind of a cut result in a hollow force.

“We can’t afford to have a cut result in irreversible damage to our industrial base.”

The pushback isn’t new. The same lawmakers, coalesced around leaders of the House Armed Services Committee, have been lobbying to protect Pentagon spending since Obama called on April 13 for an additional $400 billion in savings from security spending beyond what he had already proposed for the next 12 years. In response, Pentagon leaders began a review of military strategy, which is slated for completion in late September or October and will drive decisions on spending cuts.

What’s new is that military leaders have been brought into the effort. In a hearing Tuesday scheduled to highlight the effect of cuts on the armed services, the vice chairmen of the Army, Navy and Air Force, along with the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, all said that 10 years of war have already left their services unable to meet global operational demands. Further cuts, they said, would result in a smaller, less capable force.